Monday, December 15, 2014

A budding paleontologist finds some trilobites, or rather, they find her. By Chakira Walls

Imagine yourself
on October 10th; you were probably just relaxing on a nice day right? Well,
five Snow College geology students embarked on our geological journey for minerals and
fossils near the town of Delta, Utah. Looking at all of the beautiful minerals like topaz and quartz at Topaz
Mountain and the geodes in Dugway Range was remarkable. But, I stayed on the edge of
my seat till we could reach the House Range. Paleontology is the field I chose
to pursue and gong to the Wheeler Amphitheater was one step headed in the right
direction. It is said that paleontologists have a funny way of letting the
fossils find them and I was elated that as soon as I stepped out of the car I
saw fossils. I looked down and to my surprise I found trilobites. I ended up
finding and collecting up to 8 trilobites and even several brachiopods.

During the
Cambrian time (570-500 million years ago) most of Utah was covered in water
which explains why creatures like trilobites and brachiopods are found so many
millions of years later. Trilobites belong to the Phylum Arthropoda, which includes
animals with segmented bodies, numerous appendages and exoskeletons. Some
examples of arthropods today are, insects, siders, scorpions and centipedes. Trilobita are an extinct class of arthropods according to Rebecca L. Hylland.

From what we have been able to collect I'm
going to make an educated guess that the species of trilobite that we
collected is Asaphiscus wheeleri. You can find more
information about the type of trilobite by reading from "A collectors guide to Rock, Mineral, Fossil localities of Utah" by James Wilson. According to Hylland, most
trilobites were bottom dwellers; some actually can curl up like a modern day
pill bug, others burrow into the bottom of the sand and mud using their
shovel-shaped cephlons (heads).They were
scavengers and they would ingest the sand and mud, similar to how worms eat.